A visual revolution

There's an old, grainy video of Dan Sandin and Tom DeFanti back in the 1970s doing one of their so-called “Electronic Visualization Events,” a live, real-time performance showing off their latest discoveries in computer graphics and video.

It's pretty trippy stuff.

Sandin is wearing a Viking hat over his long, braided hair as he manipulates the video by turning the knobs on a giant machine he invented called the Sandin Image Processor. The machine has been described as the “video equivalent of a Moog audio synthesizer,” and it runs a special programming language created by DeFanti. A musician is playing live, and he does an impressive job of keeping in sync with the rapidly changing, somewhat psychedelic images dancing and spiraling across the screen.

“To us, video was sort of a revolutionary communication medium,” Sandin says. “There was a lot of utopian talk back then about how we were going to transform the world and improve it and all of that—just like there is now with the internet.”

“And, of course,” DeFanti adds, “what everybody ended up buying video cameras for were for videotaping their babies, and now that's sort of what they're doing online—.”

“Well,” Sandin interjects, “without those markets, we wouldn't have access to those kinds of things—they just wouldn't be affordable.”

DeFanti and Sandin are sitting at a table in front of a coffee cart in the courtyard of Atkinson Hall on the UCSD campus. The building houses the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), where Sandin is a part-time consultant and DeFanti is a fulltime research scientist. They're on a break between sessions of CineGrid, a conference meant to bridge the gap between the most powerful technology available today and image production and communication (attendees include Hollywood reps and scientists with an interest in translating complicated ideas through graphics).

The two chat and interrupt each other as they relax in the chilly winter sun. They have the kind of rapport that can only be cultivated through decades of collaboration.

“We've been working together over this 37-year period,” says Sandin.

“Thirty-seven-point five,” DeFanti adds. “Three-eights of a century exactly.”

Since that dated video clip of the performance, a few things have happened. The programming language DeFanti created for the Image Processor ended up being used by a guy named Larry Cuba to make the climactic Death Star attack scene in Star Wars. And a piece by Sandin was one of the first to be included in the video-art collection at the Museum of modern Art in New York.

But, mostly, the two have been working side-by-side in the important, but far less sexy, field of scientific visualization—or, creating educational tools for visualizing concepts and ideas.

“Something must be used in the place of the blackboard and hand-waving,” the wide-eyed revolutionaries stated in an article published in 1975 under the headline “Computer Graphics as a Way of Life.”

Sandin and DeFanti followed that rallying cry throughout their careers. They met and worked together at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where they founded the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (they remain directors emeriti to this day) and built the first-ever CAVE, a virtual-reality structure made up of projector screens. In the '90s, they decided that virtual reality, no longer just video, was the way to go.

“One time, there was this virologist in the CAVE looking at a virus he was interested in,” Sandin says, thinking back to one of his favorite memories of their work's real-world usage. “And, of course, he's been looking at this virus on computer screens for years, and so, I came in and he was literally on the floor of the cave looking up at this model. He says, ‘You know, I've been looking at this virus for years and I never realized there was this protein stuck through the cell wall.' There's something magical about having such a powerful tool. What's virtual reality good for? It's good for displaying complex three-dimensional objects and seeing things in a new way.”

But just as the men used their Image Processor and software for more creative pursuits in the past, the CAVE has become not only an educational tool, but also a blank canvas on which the possibilities for making art are only just now being explored.

For Synthesis: Processing and Collaboration, an upcoming exhibition of past and present works by Sandin and DeFanti, opening at the gallery in Calit2 this week, Sandin and other longtime collaborators have created a new installation for the StarCAVE (a smaller version of the CAVE that uses TV screens) called “Particle Dreams in Spherical Harmonics.”

“It's got elements of waterfalls and fireworks,” Sandin says. “That's the best way to describe it.”

In the exhibition, a looping video will feature some of the pair's older video work and, during special screenings, Sandin will show his piece “4D Julia Set.” His work will also play on an Alioscopy display, which allows for glasses-free 3D.

Until now, the pair has worked mostly on scientific and engineering applications, DeFanti says. “Dan is really the first to exploit [the StarCAVE] for art. So, maybe it will be an inspiration to other people to do things purely for the visual joy of it.”

Synthesis: Processing and Collaboration will be on view at gallery@calit2 (first floor of Atkinson Hall, UCSD) from Friday, Jan. 14, through March 11. There will be a panel discussion at 5 p.m. in the Calit2 Auditorium on Jan. 13, opening reception and demos at 6 p.m. gallery.calit2.net